"To Breckenridge tomorrow?"
"To the meeting, to the ground-breaking of the resort when the time comes—to all of it. Ask her to be with you, Finn."
For one insane moment, I actually consider it. Selfishly. Desperately. But then I shake my head.
"I can't ask that of her. She has a classroom full of kids who need her more than any resort needs me. She has her mother here. She has a reading program she's finally going to build, a life she made for herself in a town that would fight me in the street for taking her out of it. I can't ask her to pack that up because a room full of investors likes the way I jump off things." The next part comes slower. "When I try to picture getting on that plane to Colorado for good, the picture won't come. I've boarded flights my whole life the way other people board elevators. I can't see this one."
Evan doesn't say anything for a long moment. The sunroom is warm and smells like my mother's lemon trees, and my brother looks at me like he's meeting a slightly different person than the one he grew up behind.
"I've never seen you want two things at once," he says finally. "My whole life, you were always looking for the next mountain, the next adrenaline rush. The next everything, full stop. This is new."
"It's new," I agree.
I have never once, in thirty-two years, emptied the whole pack for another person. Deals, yes. Stories, the good ones, polished. Never the full weight. It turns out it's lighter the moment it's out, and I don't know what to do with that either, so I just sit there in my mother's sunroom, feeling lighter and no less lost.
Evan shifts his cast on the ottoman and asks the only question there is. "So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
All I do know is that I have between now and tomorrow to figure it out.
CHAPTER 32
DARCY
The final bell rang ten minutes ago and I'm still at my desk, stacking fifth period's quizzes into a pile I have no intention of grading tonight, because tonight I have somewhere to be. I can't keep my feelings for Finn bottled up inside me for another day without telling him what he means to me. What our relationship means. That my life no longer makes sense without him in it.
Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe this is the most reckless thing I've ever done, falling in love with the man I would've sworn up and down that I hated just a few weeks ago. All I know is, at some point during our time together I stopped being a woman who guards all the exits, and who guards her heart just as fiercely.
This weekend, somewhere between a mountain summit and my own shower, I ran out of reasons to keep the truth to myself. Or from Finn.
I love him. I want to be with him, whatever that looks like. If it looks like airports and time zones and a man who runs an empire out of a duffel bag, fine. I'll learn to love airports.
I'll even give up my Mattichogue High students, as much as that will kill me. I can teach anywhere. They'll understand. My mom will understand. Eventually, they'll all understand.
Still, it hurts just thinking about it.
As for Finn, he hasn't promised me anything. I know that. He hasn't said how he feels for me yet either. So I'll go first. Somebody has to.
Tonight. I'm going to tell him tonight.
The thought settles firm and resolved. I'm about to get up from behind my desk to collect my things when Annie appears in my doorway. One look at her and my stomach sinks a little.
I know all of Annie Felder's faces. I've had twenty years to learn them. The face she brings to fire drills, the face she brings to opening nights, the face she wore at her grandmother's funeral. This face isn't any of them. This face is careful, and it's sympathetic, and it's aimed at me.
"Hey," she says. Too soft.
"Hey." My hands go still on the quiz pile. "What's happened? Is it the play?"
She steps inside and closes the door behind her, and the click of the latch is the loudest sound of my entire day.
"Nothing happened. Everyone's fine. Everyone's safe." She pulls a student desk around to face mine and sits in it, knees together, and takes a breath like she's counting it. "I need to tell you something, and I need you to hear all of it before you decide what it means. Can you do that for me?"
I swallow. "Annie."
"Evan called me at lunch," she says. "We've been talking now and then since the auction—you know that. Today he needed to talk because he's worried about his brother." She holds my eyes, and hers are already sorry. "The Colorado deal, Darce. Finn's resort. It came through this morning. All of it, bigger than anything. Evan said there's a billion dollars of backing behind it now. But the investors want Finn out there to run it. Living there. For years."
The radiator under the window ticks. I hear it from very far away.
